Keynotes for June 2007

June 3, 2007
Holy Trinity

Proverbs8:22-31
Romans5:1-5
John16:12-15

Man is made in the image and likeness of God. But our God is a Trinity of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we attempt to plumb this profound mystery, what can we learn about the Supreme Being that will teach us more about ourselves? Today's liturgy would seem to invite us to regard the Father/ Creator as lawgiver, the Son/Redeemer as character builder, and the Holy Spirit/Sanctifier as clairvoyant/benefactor. The orthodox teachings of the Church do not assign these roles to the three persons explicitly or exclusively. But the persons seen in these roles do throw some light on why we humans exist, what values we choose to live our lives by, and ultimately what advantage we have in becoming fit for eternal life.
In bestowing the Ten Commandments upon Moses, the Father manifested Himself as lawgiver. He commands man to obey His authority, but He also authorizes man, in imitation of Himself, to exercise that authority. The Psalmist declares

You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet.(Ps.8)

And the responsibilities of that charge have loomed ever more awesome as the world progressed. Whether human government is to wage a campaign against a continental famine or to supply guidelines to the private sector for interplanetary space travel, the rule of man over the works of God's hands assumes ever greater cosmic dimensions. Our ability to imitate God the lawgiver suggests that one of the reasons He made us in the first place was for us to extend His reign even beyond this globe on which we dwell.

Paul tutors the Romans that our access to God and hope in Him is through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a hope founded on character proven by endurance born of affliction, and that hope cannot be a false one because it is placed in our hearts by the Spirit along with God's love. Traditionally we think of Jesus as our teacher, healer and saviour. But we aquire a deeper knowledge of his human character by delving into his bout with affliction. If we subject our personal values to his model and allow him to form them according to the way he handled suffering, do we not then gain a truer vision for forging the characters of those within our charge? When Paul told the Romans "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," he was shifting the paradigm from God Master controller who subdues us through conflict to God our Brother who chose the apostles for his friends and who leads us by personal example. Does Jesus desire companionship from you or me any less than he sought from the apostles? We talk a lot about character these days, what it is made of, who has it, how one gets it. But what does character amount to unless it is proven by endurance? And of what value is character itself have unless it is born of a share in that affliction which God the Son endured for our sakes?

In Proverbs we learn about the role of craftsman, which seems to be an easy match for the Holy Spirit. But "the Spirit of truth" that Jesus promises is more than that. He is the One who will "guide you to all truth." In front of his apostles Jesus insists three times that the Spirit will "will declare to you" . . . "the things that are coming." By helping them peer into the future He will allow the apostles to integrate an understanding of their mission with what Jesus had taught them. The Spirit becomes craftsman in the sense that he now has material to work with. Before the creation of the earth and the creation of human kind, the Spirit described himself as the Lord's Wisdom:

and I was his delight day by day,
playing before him all the while,
playing on the surface of his earth;
and I found delight in the human race.

As the vessel of hope always overflowing, he stood ready from the beginning to shape and sculpt and lavish divine grace upon the world. But now that he has taken charge of the apostles, he has fashioned them into his conduits.

And today we become the beneficiaries of the Father's "everything" that the Spirit took from Jesus and declared to the apostles. For this reason the possibilities multiply before us in an ever expanding horizon. We are called to be creators of our homes and our cities, utilizers of the advances in science, medicine and space exploration. We have to be builders of our families. Each of us in our various walks of life is urged to understudy the roles Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so that our human relationships might more closely resemble those within the Mysterious Model of all relationships, triune in its utmost perfection.

June 10, 2007
Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Genesis14:18-20
1Corinthians11:23-26
Luke9;11b-17

In today's Mass the passage from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians concludes: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

The age old feast of Corpus Christi is, indeed, an appropriate moment to reflect upon and acknowledge the Solemn Eucharistic Proclamation, one of four versions of which is derived from Paul's injunction, and all of which we recite (or sing) on a rotation basis in our Masses. Jesus' institution of Holy Communion at the last supper is the Event that a) embraces all of time, b) perpetuates human existence into eternity, c) fulfills God's glory, and d) liberates the universe. It is ourselves in congregation who voice this proclamation immediately after the priest has pronounced the words of consecration, after he elevates the transubstantiated Bread and Wine. A legend has it that back in the time of St. Augustine, when the priest held up the host and declared, "This is my Body," the assembly shouted back, "Yes, we are!!" A boisterous salvo of this kind may have been the primitive predecessor of our now-ritualized formulae. Albeit, the four proclamations continue to voice the stunning impact of the Eucharist in our lives. When we hear the invitation of the celebrant, "Let us proclaim the mystery of faith," we answer with one of these responses.

The first is the terse aphorism:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

All happenings of the past comprise the basis of our current faith; the present moment is love's opportunity; the future sustains our hope. Jesus' giving of his Body and Blood, an act of incomprehensible goodness, was the very act that comprehended all of time. When we respond to that Event, we reaffirm in our fleeting minute of grace a willingness to receive his Gift and we try to assimilate all the virtue that he brings.

The second proclamation expresses the most profound concern that intelligent creatures can have. We remember that Jesus promised "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him to life on the last day."(Jn6:54) So we hearken back to the origin of that Gift, and how he gave his life for us after giving his life to us, and we pray

Dying you destroyed our death,
rising you restored our life.
Lord Jesus, come in glory.

We take and eat at his command for we take him at his word. By the sacrifice of himself he has seen to it that our existence will be extended without a terminus.

The second formula is an aspiration for his return. It includes our intense desire to witness his glorification. The third formula presumes that the fulfillment of that glory is already happening outside of time.

When we eat this bread and drink this cup,
we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus,
until you come in glory.

This one, a refinement of Paul's urge upon the Corinthians, suggests that our very act of consuming the sacred species is what allows us to witness the dead Jesus rising transfigured and appearing in a blaze of glory. Yes, as his dying not only cancelled our deaths; so our ingestion of his Life also guarantees how we shall live. And, believe me, living forever in the presence of that Glory is going to take some getting used to.

In the fourth formula I perceive the liberation of the universe. Our present Holy Father has stated:

The Eucharist also has a cosmic property: the transformation of
the bread and the wine into Christ's Body and Blood is in fact
the principle of the divinization of creation itself.
Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, June, 2006.

The more people who partake of his Body and Blood, and the more often they enter into this communion, the more Christ permeates humanity. But this action has farther reaching effects, into nature and the physical world in which man dwells. We would like to think this spiritual radiation will not cease until God's presence has seeped into every particle of the universe and set it free. Such is the longing we hear in the fourth formula:

Lord, by your cross and resurrection
you have set us free.
You are the Savior of the world.

To divinize is to impart some quality or attribute of God to a created thing; to make a creature somehow "godlike" or "godworthy." A hint of this action already appears in the scenes where the highpriest Melchizedek blesses Abram, and where Jesus feeds five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes. The bread and wine on the table in front of Melchizedek symbolize that portion of our material goods that we give over so that God by touching and transforming them can connect with us. The same with the tenth of his wealth that Abram gave back. The same with Jesus' multiplication miracle. The food was given not so much to slake the physical hunger of the people, but more to awaken in them a hunger for Himself. Hints of these divinizations seem to sparkle through today' readings, especially in the sequence written by Thomas Aquinas, "Laud, O Zion." The more sensitive we become to our Lord's Body and Blood infiltrating our persons, our families, our society, the more realize that God's takeover is our liberation, for we begin to grasp
just how he is setting us free from the limitations and constraints of matter, weight, volume, distance and time. The awareness in us may grow to where, at some future Mass upon hearing the words "This is My Body" we will find ourselves squelching the urge to stand up and shout, "Yes, we are!"

June 17, 2007
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

2Samuel12:7-10,13
Galatians2:16,19-21
Luke7:36-8:3

Your faith in Jesus Christ is what justifies you, Paul tells the Galatians. And the more we ponder the events in today's readings, the more we realize how profound, how all-demanding, how overpowering that faith has to be. No wilting nor blinking nor simpering faith will be adequate to the task. Paul found this out by trying to attain justification through the works of the law. After his conversion he went through many ordeals, trials and sufferings, always attempting to figure out which of the Jewish laws--if well observed--would earn him salvation. Eventually he had to conclude that "through the law I died to the law, that I might live for God" He summed up all of his personal afflictions by accepting himself as one who had "been crucified with Christ." Though he did not pass through physical death, and was still alive in the flesh, he concluded

yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.

Perfect compliance with the law was never enough. It was not working. It was the faith that the Lord incited and developed in him, the faith Paul found himself expanding and sharing with others, this faith is what had put him in perfect synch with his Maker. This is an experience all of us must come to understand and strive for.

Levels of behavior, guided as they were by Jewish law, are exhibited in King David, Mary Magdalene, and Simon the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner. David coveted Uriah's wife, and wanted her for himself. He rationalized that his way of obtaining her was within the Lord's decrees. So what if he did put Uriah the Hittite in the front lines of battle, (to assure that he would be killed), what was wrong with that? It took the stern reprimands of Nathan, speaking for the Lord, to awaken David's conscience to the deviousness of his ways. After all the gifts and blessings I have heaped upon you, "you have despised me," the Lord said through Nathan. Only then did David fall to his knees in contrition, admitting " I have sinned against the Lord." David in the end allows his love for the Lord to overcome his use of legalities, self-deceptions and manipulations. David in the end is assurred "The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin." From David's faith comes his justification.
The way Jesus chose to handle Magdalene's intrusion into Simon's private dinner party again throws into glaring relief the stark contrast between law and faith. We must first bear in mind that Simon's gathering was in his own home, and that he had arranged a ceremony of refinement, politeness and civility. At such an event we might first suspect that Jesus would have taken Mary aside and counselled her to return at some other time and place. But no, despite her known reputation for lying, cheating, and fornication---despite her bad "rap" and despite the embarrassing fanfare she suddenly and so profusely lavished upon Jesus: kneeling behind him and weeping tears on his feet, wiping them with her hair, kissing his feet and anointing them with ointment, despite all these bizzare attentions, Jesus lifts not a finger to dismiss her. How could anyone endorse this behavior as rational, other than within a context of repentance and forgiveness? Simon's hospitality, on the other hand, is very reserved, guarded and measured. Signs that were missing, as Jesus pointed out, were the water for his feet, a kiss of greeting, and a touch of oil to anoint his forehead. Were these slights deliberate on Simon's part? Or, in going only so far, was he conscientiously following the dictates of Jewish law? His guest was someone with a reputation for prophecy but to Simon still a stranger, and presumably a first time visitor. Simon proceeded in cautious steps as prescribed by law because he was not sure who Jesus was. Mary of Magdala, despite her unsavory past, embraced Jesus wholeheartedly with an all-out act of faith. As foils for one another, these opposite treatments seem almost set up by contrivance. Until we start to examine coincidences that occur in our own lives, and wonder why they happened as they did, and what their concurrence meant Each of us is free to draw his own conclusion.

All of this notwithstanding, we can sum up the law's subordination to faith in today's triple lesson by drawing a threefold conclusion, namely that

1. had it not been for his faith in the Lord, David would have had little or no chance for forgiveness;
   
2. Paul's reasoning brought him to this outcome:
   insofar as I now live in the flesh,
   I live by faith in the Son of God; and
   
3. while Jesus responded in kind to both host and penitent, it was Mary Magdalene who received a plenary remission of her sins when he told her, Your faith has saved you; go in peace.
   

June 24, 2007
Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

Isaiah49:1-6
Acts13:22-26
Luke1:57-66,80

Every human being is created for an individuated purpose. God has designed every person ever conceived as an irreplaceable component of the eternal celebration planned for us all. No one else can ever duplicate your telos, nor mine. No one else could have performed the mission of John the Baptist as it was designed for him. In fact, we might regard his calling as a prototype of the individuated purpose into which every fertilized embryo is cast. This we find in the theme of today's liturgy: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." (Jeremiah 1:6); "From my mother's womb you are my strength" (Psalm 71) "From my mother's womb he gave me my name." (Isaiah, 49:3); "you knit me in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139). In John's case, God himself chose the name, for that name alone expressed this individual's raison d'etre.

He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb,
and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,

declares the gospel of the vigil Mass. John's mission was to convert disobedience into righteousness, to herald the coming of Jesus, to transform his people into "a light to the nations." The acclamation preceding this gospel announces the same intent:

He came to testify to the light,
to prepare a people fit for the Lord.

Not one person who has ever lived on this earth carries out quite the same assignment. As Pastor Rick Warren puts it: "If you don't make your unique contribution to the Body of Christ, it won't be made."(The PurposeDriven Life, p.241) In the formation of that final, eternal convocation of all mankind, each of us plays a distinct role and fulfills some uniquely different function.

Which raises a great horror when we reflect on how our world to this day allows the killing of the unborn with impunity. As the plague of abortion continues to run rampant and unabated in our society, how many of God's designs and plans for his final kingdom are being defeated? Can there be any tragedy greater than the wasting of an unwanted child? Suppose John the Baptist had been aborted? Could Jesus still have brought about the salvation of the world? Would the indispensable sacrament of baptism have been promulgated to every land? Would you and I have come within reach of its saving waters? We stand in awe of the Lord's intervention through Elizabeth and Zachariah, not only because He converted her barrenness to fertility and made her pregnant when she was far beyond her child-bearing years, but also because He inspired this couple to choose the child's name. We are amazed as we witness John's muted father writing on the tablet the same name his mother was so adamant about. At that point we also realize that we should take to heart the wonder of EVERY new person and ask the same question, "What, then, will this child be?" Luke's gospel passage concludes with John growing up "strong in spirit" and awaiting his day in the desert when he will be manifested to Israel.

From the account in Acts we learn how the adult John challenged his listeners with "What do you suppose that I am?" John knew his mission. He realized that we ordinary humans were not in readiness, nor could we adequately receive the Word of salvation unless our minds were first exercised and stretched, unless our imaginations were greatly expanded to accomodate the awesomeness of God living among us. As herald, precursor, "warm-up" man, he did the job for which he was made. Right down to the terrible cruelty and horrible unjustice of his untimely death, John behaved as one unworthy to touch Jesus' sandals, his conduct always guided by his motto: "He must decrease, but I must decrease." (John3:30)

Long before those events took place in Scripture, the prophet Isaiah went about characterizing the whole tribe of Israel as though it were a single person with an individuated purpose. This "person" speaks like one who is worn out, as if all his energy and strength have been spent in vain, toiling for nothing. But he takes comfort that the Lord "who formed me as his servant from the womb" will have Jacob and the other tribes restored to Him. Here again the conviction of some predestined meaning, vague but firm, blossoms with a new revelation. The God who had the Incarnation of His Son in mind from all eternity and who had pre-selected John as its forerunner, this God says No, your service is not sufficiently rewarded simply by your raising the tribes of Jacob and restoring the survivors of Israel. The reason I have worked so closely with you throughout these many generations is

I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
So what John later did for his kindred and contemporaries he was--by virtue of Isaiah's magnification-- actually doing for the whole human race.

All of which prompts us to ponder the question: if this one individual figured so indispensably in the whole plan of Salvation, then what about all those millions of babies that were aborted in just the last few decades? What could each of their lives have accomplished? And what if the laws of our land could be changed, to reestablish infanticide for the most serious crime that it is? We must try to imagine a future world so much richer in talents, abilities, synergistic activity and sharing, as a result of no one's being denied the opportunity for life itself. Think of all those individuated purposes converging into the one grand finale called Salvation History. Pastor Warren's vision is a consumation devoutly to be wished:

Jesus' parable of the talents illustrates that God expects us
to make the most of what he gives us. We are to cultivate
our gifts and abilities, keep our hearts aflame, grow our
character and personality, and broaden our experiences so
we will be increasingly more effective in our service. . . . .
We're getting ready for eternal responsibilities and rewards.
(The Purpose Drive Life, 254-55)